


you do know me

by johnny-and-dora (sian_jpg)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One-Shot, Oops, anyways enjoy, except it's four days late, fic celebrating four years since the bet!!!, this is pure self indulgent fluff because who doesn't love these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13413225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian_jpg/pseuds/johnny-and-dora
Summary: "It feels like cominghome, really home, in a way she can feel pulsing in her heart every time she looks at the ring glinting on her finger but she can’t quite describe. It feels likewow, I’ve got this stupidly hopeless romantic weirdo for the rest of my life, and he’s probably still going to keep finding a million other stupidly hopelessly romantic things to surprise me with."or the one where it's been four whole years since amy santiago broke a rule and accidentally fell in love with jake peralta, so they find a roof and celebrate.





	you do know me

**Author's Note:**

> title from one of my favourite lines from the bet, right after "that nut vendor lied to me!"  
> here you go one self indulgent bet anniversary fic that's slightly late but oh well yay

It’s almost nightfall by the time a bone-tired Amy Santiago finally puts her key in the door, unceremoniously shoving it open and shrugging off her winter coat. She’s almost willing to let it fall into a crumpled heap on the floor, ready to melt into the arms of her fiancé, more than ready to demolish the mountain of chocolate boxes they still somehow have leftover from Christmas and fall asleep to the lull of the Property Brothers. 

(Of course, she hangs her coat up tidily next to one of his well worn leather jackets anyway, but her point still stands. She’s exhausted enough to willingly make a mess.)

Amy sighs, kicking off her shoes and rubbing her temples, tutting at the coffee stain on her right sleeve, wincing at the memory all the ruined paperwork she had to meticulously rewrite and re-file on a shift she wasn’t even supposed to be working in the first place. God, she hates working weekends, even if there’s a new witness with info on the identity theft perp she’s been chasing for months. 

_Especially_ when said witness absolutely has to bring her three devil dogs into the precinct, which leaves her uncontrollably sneezing for the rest of her shift.

It’s been a long day.

She blames the exhaustion, then, for the reason why it takes her too long to notice that the apartment is strangely quiet – she’s used to coming home late from shifts to the TV blaring Serve and Protect or the kitchen radio blaring Taylor Swift, but the general peace and quiet triggers minor alarm bells in Amy’s head.

“Jake?” she calls out, a little uncertainly, expecting him to be sprawled out on the sofa in his pyjamas exactly how she left him this morning, but a brisk walk around the apartment tells her that it’s empty. It only gets weirder when their bedroom is empty too - literally empty, with most of the bedding gone. When she double checks the living room, she notices the sofa cushions are gone too.

She pushes down the swell of mild panic in her chest as she paces through the hallway, trying her best to ignore the bizarre scenario that’s running through her head that Jake’s been taking hostage by some sort of criminal with a blanket fort evil lair. Trying her best to stay calm as she cautiously reaches for her phone in her pocket. 

She has no new messages – unusual, since whenever she works a shift alone Jake normally texts her every ten minutes to talk her through tough cases, tell her that he loves her, or that they’re out of orange soda.

(They learnt a long time ago that they work best when they bounce off each other, hence the weird mix of memes she so often doesn’t quite understand and pictures of often blood stained police evidence and case files in their text message logs.)

Amy’s about to call him in a voice she’ll try way too hard to keep rational and calm, like her exhausted and slightly hysterical brain isn’t going to be ready to file a missing person’s report in the next thirty seconds – when she finally sees it, another thing out of place (yet this time slightly more comforting), glinting in the corner of her eye.

Arranged on the kitchen counter is a bottle of champagne and a large bag of sharing size nuts that brings an old memory and a smile to her face, both labelled carefully with one of her brightly coloured post-it notes with an big upwards arrow and one word scrawled in familiar big capital letters – “ROOF”. 

A quick glance at the calendar to confirm the date only makes her smile wider, and Amy quickly grabs them both from the tabletop, shrugging her coat back on and practically running her way up the three flights of stairs to the top floor. She tries her best to ignore the weird look she gets from one of their neighbours as they pass each other, no time to explain – she knows (or she hopes, she really does hope) that there is somebody at the top waiting for her. 

She finally gets to the roof, panic now almost fully overwhelmed with the curiosity at what her stupidly wonderful fiancé has done now, when she takes the view in - and the breath is quite literally knocked out of her.

The usually perfectly ordinary, previously largely insignificant roof of their apartment building is beautifully adorned with a sea of blankets and cushions, bordered by a long stream of fairy lights that glisten in unison with the bright lights of the New York skyline they seem to be right at the heart of. 

Basically, it’s the biggest and best open air blanket fort Amy has ever seen, and she can’t stop smiling - mainly at the sheer ridiculousness of her life and how it’s become infinitely more ridiculous since Jake somehow landed himself right in the middle of it. 

It’s ridiculous and perfect and straight out of a straight to DVD cheesy romantic comedy that they’d probably fall asleep to; but most importantly, it’s exactly what she needs right now. No less because the love of her life is sitting right in the middle of it grinning at her in that stupidly wonderful way, but mainly because it feels _right_. 

It feels like coming _home_ , really home, in a way she can feel pulsing in her heart every time she looks at the ring glinting on her finger but she can’t quite describe. It feels like _wow, I’ve got this stupidly hopeless romantic weirdo for the rest of my life, and he’s probably still going to keep finding a million other stupidly hopelessly romantic things to surprise me with_. 

Amy doesn’t think that quite counts as an emotion, but she can’t quite bring herself to care. 

“Has it been four years already?” She says, tossing the bag of nuts at him and setting the champagne down carefully next to the two tall glasses set to the side. 

“I know, it’s crazy. Happy roof-iversary!” He grins, and she eliminates the small space between them as quickly as she can, dragging him in for a kiss in lieu of a response.

She melts into him a little too desperately, just so he knows how much she’s been craving the buzz of his soft laughter on her lips all day, how long she’s been longing to for him to put his arms around her so she can feel both their hearts beating at once. 

“Woah. Hi.” He says softly, after a while, and she smiles fondly.  
“Hi - I missed you today. Work was hell.”

“I missed you too. But I kept busy.” He gestures widely around him, like an artist unveiling his latest masterpiece, and she giggles, her heart already feeling a thousand times lighter than it was when she walked through the door.

“You did all this?”  
“Well, yeah. I wanted to, y’know, celebrate - seeing as it was technically our first date ‘n’ all...” She rolls her eyes, pushing him away playfully. She wants to tell him to shut up or bite back some retort about that ridiculous blue plastic dress or that humiliating Titanic jig, buts she’s too busy looking up at him like he’s her moon and stars (which to be fair, he pretty much is) and wondering how she got so lucky.

“By yourself?”  
“Yep. I tried to get Charles to help, but he wouldn’t stop crying over the whole idea on the phone. I don’t think he even noticed that I hung up.”  
“Wow.”  
“I know.” Amy shakes her head; truth be told, she’s genuinely a little worried that Charles won’t make it through the ceremony. She makes a mental note to have Terry stand behind him so he can catch him if – when – he falls.

“...Do you like it?” Jake asks, a little tentatively after a pregnant pause, staring down at his well loved, scuffed sneakers.

Amy drinks it all in for another second, laughing as she realises the fairy lights are just the Christmas lights they’ve been putting off taking down for two weeks, chest aching with nostalgia for _that_ night and _that_ stakeout and the moment when she realised that the strange electric feeling she’d been getting lately whenever he looked at her wasn’t going away any time soon.

She realises he’s still waiting attentively for an answer, so she lifts her hands up to fondly and gently cup his face.

“You are unbelievable.”

“...Unbelievable good? Or unbelievable like that one time I tried to be helpful and do laundry but I accidentally somehow shrunk all our clothes like four sizes too small?”

“Unbelievable good. Unbelievably amazing, and romantic, and cheesy, and stupid, and I love you.”

“Love you too.” They kiss again, and that strange electric feeling is still in her fingertips, after all this time, as their fingers intertwine. 

They sit down together at the edge of the building, Jake wrapping a blanket around her shoulders like a cape and pouring them each a glass of champagne. The clink of their glasses seems to ring out into the night loud and clear, even against the distant cacophony of the sirens and the traffic and the city around them bursting with vibrant life. 

And the January air is bitter and cruelly cold, and Amy still feels the exhaustion softly smouldering in every bone in her body - but she sinks her body up against his with quiet and content intimacy, ring still a glinting radiant promise in silver on her finger.  
And just like that, just as surely as she feels the steady rhythmic rise and fall of their chests harmonise, and just as surely as she sees the silver mists of their breath take flight on the icy winter winds and float off into the ink, she knows everything is going to be okay. 

“I can’t believe I broke your stupid date rule.” Amy grumbles, half-jokingly, after a few minutes of comfortable nostalgia filled and thought heavy silence, head resting on his shoulders.

“Hmm? – Oh yeah, you weren’t allowed to fall in love with me, right?” He says, _that_ grin slowly spreading across his face like a wildfire.  
“Trust me, I tried really hard not to.” She says, a little muffled, head buried into his shoulder, and when she looks up at him he’s trying his best to maintain a serious face. 

“Well to be fair, Ames, it’s not your fault. I am incredibly irresistible.” 

Amy scoffs, then laughs when Jake acts offended, rolling her eyes, so completely and utterly endeared with her idiot of a fiancé, lost swimming in the warm dark pools of his deep brown eyes, pure joy glowing in her stomach not wholly unlike the quiet happiness - the electricity - she’d glowed with for weeks after they’d first sat on that rooftop.  
God, she’d had it bad for him then. She still does now. 

“What?” He asks softly, still grinning, after she’s been staring in silence for far too long. She blushes, suddenly shy.

“Nothing. Just, thank you. All of this, it’s...perfect.” The smile on his face as she says it is worth a million hellish shifts all at once, so she snuggles up a little closer to him.

“And...for what it’s worth? I’m very glad I broke your dumb rule.”  
“I’m very glad you broke it too.”  
“Neither of us saw that one coming, huh?”  
“Told you I could surprise you.” 

“I’m beginning to think you keep doing it just to spite me.” Amy grumbles, pulling the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders.  
“Well, obviously.” He laughs, kissing the top of her forehead. They both drink in the skyline for another minute, and under the cover of the dark they feel like the only two people in the city. 

“I’m winning two to none by the way. Step up your game, Santiago.”  
“Oh, you’re on, Peralta. I’m going to surprise the living hell out of you. I’m a surprise ninja, lurking in the shadows, ready to strike with romantic gestures when you least except It.”  
“Do your worst.”  
“Oh, I will.” 

They stay up there for a little while longer, laughing as Amy rants about her day and Jake cracks jokes and dramatically gasps and acts outraged at all the right moments, throwing nuts at each other and drinking champagne until the clouded mid-winter sky is streaked with the jet black of the small hours and Amy’s face is almost fully numb, partly from smiling but mostly from the cold. Then they stumble down the stairs home, dragging their blankets and pillows with them, mildly intoxicated and ridiculously happy.

It’s long past nightfall when a bone-tired Amy Santiago shuffles contentedly under the covers, ready to sleep as soon as her head hits the pillow – but she smiles as she closes her eyes, light with contentment and joy at the promise of a thousand more rooftop nights and makeshift blanket forts and hopelessly romantic surprises with the love of her life right beside her.

**Author's Note:**

> (bonus: the great peralta-santiago surprise war stretches over the next year and a half, starting with a shower of rose petals scattered over their bed and ending with a positive pregnancy test, for which amy proudly claims her victory with a little more than pure joy glowing in her stomach) 
> 
> thanks for reading! come scream about these nerds with me over on my b99 tumblr, @johnny-and-dora ^-^


End file.
